Date Approved

4-29-1999

Embargo Period

8-1-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A. in School Administration

Department

Educational Services and Leadership

College

College of Education

Advisor

Johnson, Theodore

Subject(s)

Quality of School Life Scale; High school dropouts

Disciplines

Elementary and Middle and Secondary Education Administration

Abstract

The purpose of this ex post facto, action research project is to test the hypothesis that the Quality of School Life Scale (Epstein & McPartland, 1976) has the predictive capability to identify students, early in a school year, who later in the school year manifest traditional disengaged behaviors. If the hypothesis is supported and students who, as a group, score lower on the QSL Scale display significantly more traditional disengaged behaviors than higher scoring students, the finding would support using the QSL as a proactive assessment tool to identify students who are at-risk for disengagement.

This study has several phases: the administration of a survey to a class of 420 sophomores of a suburban high school; a "wait and see" period of time of approximately four months; data collection of behavioral manifestations of disengagement; and statistical analysis of the data using correlations, means/anova/t-tests, crosstabulations and percentages, chi-squares, and discriminant analysis.

The QSL scale predicted disengaged behaviors with 69% accuracy. The findings indicate that traditional indicators of disengagement may not be the best indicators ... that there are silently disengaged students who do not act out in school.

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